Month: October 2016

Tanga staring down a deer
Today was gray but we hiked anyway. Bdot wanted to do around 5km we did 8km at Albion Hills. We did a combination of Red and Blue trails. Most of the leaves are down, but it is still a lovely hike. Didn’t step in shit today, so that is good.

Art Gallery of Ontario
Yesterday bdot and I met up with my mom, uncle, my uncle’s wife, my uncle’s wife’s sister, brother and friend at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Phew… Yes there was a gaggle of us. Parking downtown is always a pain in the ass. On a whim I decide to see if there was an app to help find parking. Of course there is an app for that. Best Parking not only finds places to park but shows the price to do so. We paid $7 to park! What a great app! The AGO has a special exhibit called Mystical Landscapes: Masterpieces from Monet, Van Gogh and more. It was an incredible exhibit. There were only two Van Gogh paintings there and they seemed to be the stars of the show. Especially Starry Night over the Rhone.Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhone 1 (1888)
Others from the collection were also stunning including Lauren Harris’ Isolation Peak:Lauren Harris – Isolation Peak
I was also impressed by Eugène Jansson’s night scenes. Including:Eugene Jansson, “Gryning over Riddarfjarden”
The Monets were also incredible.
Outside of the Mystical Landscapes there was still plenty to see. The wood carvings were incomprehensible. The amazing artists carved small chunks of wood (smaller than a loaf of bread) into three dimentional scenes with small parts of the scene mere millimeters wide. Absolutely incredible and some were over 300 years old.
The Toronto section at the top was fun.Burn Baby Burn – One of the neon exhibits
One of the exhibits that caught my eye was Highway to Hell: Conservator Sherry Phillips revisits the Trans Am Apocalypse No. 3. The artist scratched a poem into a old Trans Am… it was curious and disturbing.Faithful Unto Death
We would have joined the gang for dinner and drinks but we had to get home for the dog. Ho-hum. It is always a fun trip to see what is going on at the AGO. Well maybe not the creepy half naked guys swearing that were doing live art… which I still don’t get.

My old computer was being held together with hope and dreams. So I finally got a new case, Deep Cool’s TESSERACT SW-RD. It was cheap but so far I’m quite impressed with it.New Case

Sabres were impressive this weekend! They are back to .500. Keep rolling boys!

TFC won tonight and will play again next weekend for a chance to advance. They are up two goals going back to New York.

Presently we are making our way through Netflix series Luther. It is really good. Incredible acting.

Lovely walk in Albion Hills
Ontario is really lovely this time of year. Walks are mandatory. We did the long Red Trail Loop. It is listed as 8.4km but we walked in to the trail so it was closer to 10.3km. It is certainly Albion Hills. I was pretty zonked after the walk but it was worth it. (Bdot’s phone said the elevation changes were the equivalent of over 60 floors!) The trees and leaves were still full of colour, there was a few minor vistas and numerous changes in scenery. We had a great fish dinner to reward ourselves from the long walk. Yes, I ate some salmon.

The new motherboard I bought four months ago (the ASRock H61M-DGS R2.0) died. It won’t POST and it’s stuck in a boot loop. Disappointing. I’ve never bought ASRock before so…I was apprehensive. Fortunately ASRock allowed me to return it or repair (RMA!). I’m not entirely sure what they will do, but I’d love to continue using my old i5 chip. It is a beast. I’ll update this once this is resolved.

Ugh. Walking Dead. Brutal. I think it has gone too far. Killing off two of my Favourite characters so savagely. The series is popular because of the characters killing them all leaves nothing. Meh.

Had a short visit today by KK and his kids. We watched TFC end the season with a win! They are finally getting their first home playoff game in franchise history. TFC! TFC! TFC!

Stained stairs
The stairs may not have turned out exactly like we wanted… But they they are protected.

Four years!
Yesterday we celebrated our four year wedding anniversary. It is remarkable how time flies. I’m happy to have my spouse and friend as my partner. The past year would certainly not make the highlight reel but we have pushed through it together.

Wow… The Sabres. Where to begin. First Jack goes down in practice then Kane wipes himself out in yesterday’s deplorable game. Kane’s status is still unknown. The team looked so unprepared to compete. I’m really starting to wonder if Bylsma really has the right plan for this team. Game one over reaction? Possibly. But it was so deflating to watch them clueless most of the night. Not to mention all the cheap shots taken by the Habs that went unaddressed. Vomit. If they don’t wake up I expect worse on Sunday in Edmonton.

What a beautiful day.
It was a glorious weekend and we sure took advantage of it. We hiked every day this long weekend. Saturday we did a hike out of Loops and Lattes – hike #32 Rockside Loop. Unfortunately we weren’t aware that part of the hike was closed. Apparently an invasive bug is eating trees in the area and many are unstable ‘widow makers’. Ugh. So we made the best of what was available. We didn’t want to do any road walking so the hike was curtailed a bit. The section we did do was lovely. Bdot flushed some birds giving herself a scare. It was a great afternoon. Not being aware of the trail closure prompted us to look at the Bruce Trail App… It is currently 50% off so we both decided to grab it. I’ve used it for one hike and found it very useful so far. It is a little odd with the limited cell reception much of the Bruce trail is on, but it figures things out once it connects with the outside world.Rockside Bruce Trail Side Trail
I’m sure we’ll try this section again once this trail is opened back up.

Sunday’s hike was a monster! We met up with my Sister, BiL and their rambunctious dog Boomer. Boomer was clearly the most excited about the hike often acting like he was shot out of a cannon. We hiked the Boyne River Primrose Trail (Bruce trail Org .PDF here). It was one of the nicest hikes we have done in the region. It included an incredible vista.Tanga, Boomer and that view.
It was a tough hike. A lot of it was uphill and there were tons of ‘sliprocks’. There was a stunning section with boardwalks that passed over a creek and a boggy area.Pretty area. Photo by my sister.
I can certainly see returning to do this hike again.Trail signage

Yesterday we met up with the nephews and Bdot’s sister and BiL for a much more leisurely hike through Palgrave forest. It was clearly a holiday as it was very busy in the forest. The nephew’s did well keeping up during the two loops we did. It was fantastic to see some more family during this Thanksgiving weekend. Once we got home bdot prepared an incredible Turkey dinner for us. It was delicious and we’ll be eating it for a few days.

WOO! Jays! Game three was tense! The Rangers took the Jays into extra innings before a (LOL!) error on Odor cost the Rangers the game. What poetic justice. The Baseball Gods spoke for sure!

It was a tough weekend for me. I seem to associate October and the Thanksgiving weekend with my Dad… so memories flooded back and it was often difficult. I sure do miss him.

It was weekend to reflect on the many things I’m thankful for. Foremost is my wife and family and health. These are the most important things in my life.

The glorious double stream
Last week the World Cup of Hockey was winding up and there was pre-season hockey. So what to do? Well… find two streams to watch Sabres/Leafs and Canada/Europe. Pre-season always begins the questions of how will the teams do. I’ve read a few projections and none have been favourable for the Sabres. Some even have them doing worse than last year. I don’t see how that is possible with a healthy goalie, off-season acquisitions and the growth of some of the star rookies. Huh, if they do slide backward it would mean Murray’s job IMHO…

It was one of nephew’s birthday last weekend so we joined them to play laser tag in Aurora. It was pretty fun! Hot and sweaty – not in a good way – but I teamed up with the eldest nephew and we beat the rest of the birthday boy and his friends.Aye Aye Solar Captain
The evening was a relaxing afternoon back at my SiL’s.

Sunday we wanted to go hiking but it was calling for rain. So instead we drove down to Etobicoke to do some shopping. We are finally looking into some updates to my office and hopefully a new lounging chair as well. (To watch aforementioned hockey!) We found a bunch of curious options at the soul sucking visit to IKEA. One option might be a DIY Pipe desk…. I do like the industrial look and it can be configured fairly easier. We shall see…

Update!Edwin with a homer in the 11th for the Jays to beat the O’s
What a tease game! Jays now rematch Texas. Should be good times. Texas will be tough.

Update!!
Wow! 10-1! What a spanking. I guess the Jays were resting their bats in September so they could use them in October! ^__^

So my gaming/main computer has finally died. I can’t determine if it is the CPU or the Motherboard. The motherboard is fairly new so I doubt that is the issue. It was running Windows 10 when it died. The system would suddenly just reset. I took out everything other than CPU, RAM and Mobo and it wouldn’t even POST. If it was the CPU, then that Intel i5 was pretty impressive. I don’t have another motherboard so I can’t confirm which component it was. Regardless, it now about 5 years old and it was used heavily so… if it was the CPU then it served me well. Although I would still lean toward the ARrock motherboard as the issue. *sigh* I’m not going order another dated motherboard just to use that CPU… So now I’m running an AMD Athlon as my second computer. The CPU is easily a decade old and slooooooooooooow as hell. I tried Windows 7 and it was a gong show updating it – so I’ve switched it over to Linux Mint 18 with XFCE. I’m hoping to get a new motherboard and CPU relatively soon. I still have DDR3 RAM and a GPU so I wouldn’t need much. Debating between the AMD A10 7860K, AMD A10 7870K, Intel i3-4170 and Intel i3-6320. I’ve used both CPUs and been happy with both brands. So it is really just about performance and price.